Memory cards are known in the art and contain intelligence in the form of a memory circuit or other electronic program. Some form of card reader reads the information or memory stored on the card. Such cards are used in many applications in today's electronic society, including video cameras, digital still cameras, smartphones, PDA's, music players, ATMs, cable television decoders, toys, games, PC adapters, multi-media cards and other electronic applications. Typically, a memory card includes a contact or terminal array for connection through a card connector to a card reader system and then to external equipment. The connector readily accommodates insertion and removal of the card to provide quick access to the information and program on the card. The card connector includes terminals for yieldingly engaging the contact array of the memory card.
The memory card connector often is mounted on a printed circuit board. The memory card, itself, writes or reads via the connector and can transmit between electrical appliances, such as a word processor, personal computer, personal data assistant or the like. With circuit board mounted connectors, the terminals of a connector include tail portions which are connected to appropriate circuit traces on the printed circuit board by various systems, such as surface mount technology where the tail portions are reflow soldered to the circuit traces. Through hole technology involves inserting the tail portions of the terminals into holes in the printed circuit board for connection, as by soldering, to circuit traces on the board and/or in the holes. Both surface mount technology and through hole technology involve relatively high temperatures and are permanent connections. If it is desired to be able to easily remove and maintain or replace a memory card connector from the printed circuit board, the tail portions of the terminals are simply maintained under pressure against the circuit traces on the board.
All of these systems of electrically coupling the terminals of the memory card connector to the circuit traces on the printed circuit board create problems of aligning the terminal tail portions with the circuit traces. The tail portions can be misaligned or even deformed during shipping, assembly or other handling of the memory card connector. The tail portions can even deform due to the high temperatures of a reflow soldering process which is necessary for the surface mount technology as well as the through hole technology. These problems are multiplied when a connector is designed for receiving more than one memory card, such as two different types of memory cards requiring two different arrays of terminals with two sets of tail portions. The present invention is directed to solving these problems.